Mike Leader© 2019 All Rights Reserved

A history of the Greenwich Blue Coat Schools

13 February 1748

Three of ye Girls having got ye Itch (viz Holland, Clark, & Petty) they are sent home this day to be cured.

23 April 1748

Ord’d that Mrs Moore buys some Milk & some Brimstone to make posset drink for the Girls to prevent their having the Itch or cure it if they have got it.

As Eliz’th Pettys mother did not manage her daughter according to the directions given by the Apothecary when she went home with the Itch, but (as we are inform’d) throw’d away the Medicines . . . And it having broke again upon her lately to the great danger of Infecting the whole School, Order’d that she be Expelled the School & that all her new Linen be left.

(Note: Michael Johnson, a Science Teacher and Deputy Headteacher at the school in June 1988, wrote an article entitled “Blackheath Bluecoat School 1700 onwards” which included many of these quotations from the Ladies’ Committee Order Book. He notes :”The Apothecary was a Mr Judd. He died at the start of 1750 and left a £10 legacy to the school. It is recorded in the accounts that when Elizabeth Petty left “half a crown” (12½p) was deducted from Mrs Moore’s weekly allowance, the amount she was allowed each week to feed, clothe and educate each girl”)

23 December 1748

"Gardiner having a bad swelling in her Throat Doctor Newington advised she be put into St Tho’s Hospitall, and she was entered there ye 11th Inst’, Ordd that Mrs Moore be paid five shillings the charges of carrying her into the Hospitall."

17 June 1749

"Gardiner's Neck being swelled again and she very full of some Violent bad Humour, Doctr Newington advises again that she be sent to some Hospitall & is so kind at the request of the Comittee as to endeavour to get her into Guys, as they will keep her longer there for a case at any other Hospitall."

30 August 1754

Mary Turner being taken into the School by mistake she not having had the Small Pox

Ord’d  that she be sent to Hospitall  for Inoculation as Lady Creed is so good as to get her admitted there.

(Mike Johnson comments on this last quotation: “What interests me about the Mary Turner entry is that in 1754 Edward Jenner, famous for pioneering smallpox vaccination, was only a boy and it was not until 1796  forty two years later that he carried out his famous experiment. No doubt Mar yTurner was inoculated with live small pox.”)

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